Pages

Sunday, 13 March 2016

There is no doubt that
humankind has changed the face of the planet fundamentally, and this has now a
name:the age of the Anthropocene. However, the question is, whether we
should be proud or concerned about it, and how long it will last. Because
the age of the Robotocene is probably just a few years ahead - just a
splitsecond ongeological time scales.

The world isn’t in particular
good shape. We haven’t managed to overcome the last financial, economic, and
public spending crisis, but the next one is looming already. We are faced with
climate change, which may eradicate one sixth of all species. Peace throughout
the world has become quite unstable. Terrorism and cybercrime are on the rise.
We are struggling with demographic change: an ageing population and mass
migration. Above all, we are overusing many resources of our planet. On
average, we are using 50% more resources than we should, if we want to be
sustainable on the long run. In fact, this is closely connected with our
chances of survival. Our current economy is running largely on oil, gas, and
coal. While these technologies have made our lives easier, the world population
has exploded. It has grown by a factor of more than five, almost ten. So, if we
now have to reduce CO2 emissions to save our climate and our planet, it is not
entirely clear how many people our planet can carry. If we want to survive
rather than to die of disease, hunger, or war, we need to quickly build a
low-carbon economy and learn to handle scare resources more efficiently. These
include nitrogen, phosphorus and water, i.e. the ingredients needed for food
production.

Probably in response to these
challenges, governments around the world have started to collect Big Data about
everyone and everything. This was driven by the belief that more data means
more knowledge, more knowledge means more power, and more power means more
success. While this sounds plausible, things aren’t that easy. In fact, even
though we have better technology and more data than ever, we haven’t managed to
solve the above mentioned problems. Instead, we are faced with new ones, such
as the loss of jobs. It turns out that we are in the middle of a fundamental
transformation of our economy and society, driven by the digital revolution.
Automation using intelligent algorithms and machines is expected to replace
about 50% of today’s jobs, which means that we will have to reinvent half of
our economy in just about 20 years. Moreover, we are seeing the rise of new,
data-driven forms of historical governance models, such as fascism 2.0 (a big
brother and brave new world society), communism 2.0 (based on a benevolent dictator
model), and feudalism 2.0 (based on a few monopolies and a new kind of caste
system, using citizen scores). These kinds of data-driven societies would
manage scarce resources in a top-down way, more or less totalitarian. In times
of scarcity, they would decide who would be entitled to get what amount of what
resource and what kind of (public) service. When it comes to providing certain
kinds of medicine, such decisions could easily be a matter of life or death, in
particular in times where multi-resistant bacteria, which cannot be fought by
our antibiotics, are on the rise.

I think that we should instead
build capitalism 2.0, because capitalism has been the so far most successful
economic system, based on bottom-up self-organization, entrepreneurial and
individual freedom, competition, high innovation rates, efficiency,
flexibility, and resilience. The upgraded capitalism would be more democratic,
I believe, leading to democracy 2.0. What we need to build is an open and
participatory framework that supports "ecosystem thinking",
co-creation, co-evolution, and collective intelligence. Furthermore, the
Internet of Things allows us now to measure external effects of interactions,
to price such positive and negative externalities, and to trade them in a multi-dimensional
way - a system that I call "finance 4.0". This would create entirely
new markets, but first of all, promote resource efficiency, a circular economy,
sharing, and cooperation. In this multi-dimensional exchange system, additional
kinds of "money" would be created in a bottom-up way. This mechanism
could generate a living for everyone and public resources in times, where
progressive automation is threatening incomes, taxes, and consumption, i.e. the
basis of our economy.

It is time to build the framework for the digital society
to come. There is no time to lose. The FuturICT initiative is working on this
(see www. futurict.eu, nervousnet.info). You
should be, too! A new Zeitgeist is needed...

FuturICT Hubs

Followers

FET Flagship Initiative

The activities leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 284709 - project 'FuturICT', a Coordination and Support Action in the Information and Communication Technologies activity area